I always wanted to have some other workstation than SGI. I love the serious design of later HP Unix workstation (ZX6000....) I see many C8000 on ebay these days, but I don't know when I can no longer resist to purchase one.

I do not know anything on HP UX but I'm really interested to see one in action. What were their main use in industry ? The FireGL X1 is based on 9700pro, so I think the station have some 3D horsepower. I don't know much about the Dualcore 1Ghz.

Welcome to the C8000 club they're brilliant machines. HPUX 11.11 runs really nicely on these. And yes, supposing you have the right version (which you probably won't have much trouble getting your hands on) it has full 3D accelleration.

need to get the audio card for it...

Audio is onboard on these machines. Check ioscan I have mine running UX 11.11 MCOE, with a big chunk of pkgsrc built apps on top of it; I have fluxbox as a desktop, firefox 3.5.9 is available from HP (since you really, REALLY don't want to try building firefox on UX yourself), and everything else that I need, I build

Alver wrote:firefox 3.5.9 is available from HP (since you really, REALLY don't want to try building firefox on UX yourself)

Out of curiosity, why is that? (I'm still quite new to HP-UX myself.)

The main reason is because firefox depends on xulrunner, which has large parts implemented in assembler code. This code can only be built using aCC on HPUX. But since the rest of the firefox code is written with gcc in mind, you have a choice between re-implementing the assember, or fixing half a billion gcc-isms in the code...

I got pretty far at some point in time, after spending many weeks working on it. But even then I was still far, far away from getting a working build. When I learned that HP provided firefox 3+, I stopped and never looked back.

HP9000/PA-RISC is an interesting architecture. The workstations were often used for CADD and electronics design because HPPA was pretty fast in practice due to the caching system. HP tried to muscle in on SGI's market with the Visualize FX and later graphics, but they never seemed to have the supporting structure that SGI gave you.

HP-UX is solid but not too fancy. About the only one that comes with (mostly full) VxFS support out of the box. I don't like the firmware/console as much as I like some of the others (OpenBoot, SGI ARCS, SRM), but it works. The biggest drawback in driver support is the same as IRIX - no USB block support.

SAM is a nice entry point, since it supports both text mode and graphics, and unlike AIX you can easily move to "native" administration. It also ships with trusted features so you can use those.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

There are a few up for auction in sweden for about 850 dollars. Waay to pricy for me, but I'm curious about their value. Some had a "Magellan Spacemouse" if it makes a difference.

There are various low spec (900MHz, no GFX or HD, off-lease so maybe a bit scuffed) systems selling via auction for about €35 these days on eBay.de. More complete systems are generally €135 and upwards. HP-UX on the desktop is dead for a long time, so these systems are not too valuable commercially anymore.

kramlq wrote:HP-UX on the desktop is dead for a long time, so these systems are not too valuable commercially anymore.

I think the only grand old damme that's still around for the desktop is Solaris, and based on how Oracle's marketing it I wouldn't count on it being a "current desktop" (i.e. still being developed and marketed as a desktop system) for much longer.

OpenVMS and AIX are limping along in "maintenance" (the system is still being developed, but the desktop part is stagnant), and the rest are discontinued, dying (Tru64, IRIX) or in bankruptcy.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

SAQ wrote:OpenVMS and AIX are limping along in "maintenance" (the system is still being developed, but the desktop part is stagnant), and the rest are discontinued, dying (Tru64, IRIX) or in bankruptcy.

I think that anyone who wants UNIX on the desktop these days, is buying either Linux or Macintosh. Neither make a very weak case for themselves, competitively speaking. If I were IBM or HP or whatever remains of Sun, I certainly wouldn't want to be trying to compete in that space at this point.